ActBlue - Reddit for Warren

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Welcome to /r/ElizabethWarren, a community for supporters of US Senator Elizabeth Warren, a candidate for President of the United States of America. For more information about Sen. Warren, be sure to visit her campaign website!

If we organize together, if we fight together, if we persist together, we can win!

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"I think right now people want to see improvements in our health care system, and that means strengthening the Affordable Care Act," she told students at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics this week, while adding that she still wants to get to single payer eventually.

The candidate who is pushing for improvements to the ACA just won the primary against the candidates pushing for M4A. This is why I hate the idea of "flip flopping" so freaking much. Is she supposed to ignore what voters want? Is she supposed to dogmatically push for the changes she wants and tell all the voters they are just wrong?

She has never been the kind of candidate who thought her word was the final word on every matter, her ideas are the only good ideas, or any deviation from her original plan is necessarily a bad thing.

She has always listened and always responded by genuinely considering the other view.

Her goal has always been to make the economy work for everyone. To her, M4A was one of the things she thought could achieve that goal. But the voters spoke out and said they were too scared to try that right now. So she has pivoted to a new strategy that will also achieve her goals.

This was the actual reason I liked Warren in the first place. Her ability to work towards a goal and not get caught up on the exact mechanisms for achieving that goal.

The candidate who is pushing for improvements to the ACA just won the primary against the candidates pushing for M4A. This is why I hate the idea of "flip flopping" so freaking much. Is she supposed to ignore what voters want? Is she supposed to dogmatically push for the changes she wants and tell all the voters they are just wrong?

This is not a pivot or a flip flop. In the link below you can see that her very first step was always to protect and strengthen the ACA (by removing Trump's sabotage). The only difference now is the timeline. Let's not give them an inch.

Not to mention that strengthening the ACA is not antithetical to getting M4A. It's a reasonable first step, so the fact that she's endorsing it doesn't mean that she's against the ACA, just that she sees this as the most feasible path to take to get there, considering the situation we're in right now.

Not to mention that strengthening the ACA is not antithetical to getting M4A. It's a reasonable first step, so the fact that she's endorsing it doesn't mean that she's against the ACA, just that she sees this as the most feasible path to take to get there, considering the situation we're in right now.

Which is a path Sanders and Warren both endorsed in 2016 when they and a bunch of other Dems in Congress called for adding the public option to the ACA

I think the argument on healthare using who won as a metric is a bit short sighted. Lots of polls from states Biden won still showed people who voted for him preferred M4A. Now obviously many flavors of that, but still.

The more practical consideration is how close Biden would get to that, what kind of malleability he has on healthcare, and what kind of policies to the Policy taskforces come up with. Pramilya Jayapal has already suggested things like kiddie care and lowering medicare to 55 or 50.

Lots of polls from states Biden won still showed people who voted for him preferred M4A.

Wanting something in a vacuum and wanting something in a context are different things. Those who answered the polls may have wanted it, but they did not want it enough to vote for it in a candidate who had to go up against Trump. My take is that people wanted a safer and easier victory and they thought Biden was the safer and easier candidate to put up against Trump. I disagree, I thought this was the perfect time to elect someone like Warren. But that is obvious as I supported Warren.

The more practical consideration is how close Biden would get to that, what kind of malleability he has on healthcare

100% agree. I think we should try and push Biden towards expansions in Healthcare that achieve the same goal as Medicare for All or build a good pathway for M4A passing later on with a different candidate.

I also think it is prudent for Warren to be making that push rather than continuing to argue about how she would have been a better president by continuing to push her own platform.

Lots of polls from states Biden won still showed people who voted for him preferred M4A.

And every one of those polls showed they preferred a public option more. Reddit certainly kept cherry picking stats to support the M4A narrative. Both solutions were appealing, public option just appealed more.

Putting aside the cherry picking accusation....I haven't seen any where the p[ublic option was preferred more, though yes people tend to have a positive view on both. Because people want a better healthcare system than what we have now.

This was also before tens of millions of people lost their jobs, and I'd imagine polling has changed in the midst of a massive crisis.

What's dumb is thinking that single payer is the be-all and end-all. Plenty of countries have achieved universal healthcare with mixed payment systems. Americans want universal healthcare; it's not imperative that it has to be single payer.

It literally says she talks about intermediate steps in the immediate term, as a stepping stone to M4A in the future, which she emphasizes that she still supports. Isn’t that what she ultimately ran on in her campaign for President?

This reads like she’s just reiterating the platform she already had.

Where’s the pivot? This is literally exactly what she did in November 2019– there’s nothing new here...right?

The same people that said she not only did not support Bernie's version M4A but also called her a murderer for it, even though her version of M4A just took a bit longer and made far more sense.

There's a lot of sour grapes among the anti-Warren left now that they blame her for Sanders' defeat (and not because of the many weaknesses of his campaign, because as far as they're concerned Sanders could have only improved if he attacked people more often), and I doubt they're ever going to stop. The solution then is to counter them every time they try to lie and not accept them with open arms every time they try to enter a conversation.

I completely agree with you, there's no pivot and it pisses me off that people (even Warren supporters) are just accepting that premise. This article is just red meat for dishonest actors who have been screeching that Warren pivoted on M4A ever since she released her own plan. It's only meant to divided the left, lower Warren's base of support and push Biden to more moderate candidates. All day and all night these "leftists" talk about how the media is all about manufacturing consent yet they can't help but jump on any article painting Warren as disingenuous.

At the same time, while it’s not a full pivot, it is a softening of a stance. She and Biden were opposed on healthcare and attacked each other over it, now she is emphasizing the areas of common ground between them instead of the differences.

I’m not a fan of a Politico, but I find nothing wrong this article, and nothing wrong with what either she or Biden are doing. Regardless of whether Warren is chosen as VP, they both need Biden to win. And she makes a stronger ticket and therefore a better running mate if she can show she can bring in progressives while playing nice.

Don’t ever trust polls on healthcare. People are idiots about it. How many times has the public flip-flopped on Obamacare? So playing it safe and emphasizing a shared need for better healthcare while not tilting too far left is the right play.

Not everything Biden says represents his true inflexible opinion. Same with Warren. That’s politics. And that is not always a bad thing. It’s why Biden won and Warren is a VP candidate and influencing policy and some other types are left out and throwing tantrums.

I just feel like some people here have the wrong target. No one demanded that Warren massively change her stance and in fact she is not. None of the mainstream left is angry at Warren for selling out, nor do they view this as a sellout. Politico to me, being rah rah establishment Dem, is more like “Look how well we can get along” than “What a hypocrite Warren is.” Look over at a certain meme sub. That’s who is angry about this and thinks it’s a flip-flop.

Politico is a pretty trash news organization, tuned for clicks, not for promoting an ideology. They chose their wording on purpose so it would be a good headline ("pivot") to share on social media so people could either say "I told you", "hah", or "this is wrong!", all while they get their pageviews.

This answer doesn't really say anything new about Warren's ideology beyond (correctly) wanting to get Biden elected. "What do you think about healthcare now?" was never going to be answered with "I think Joe Biden's plan is trash" or "I renounce my former position", especially when a public option IS a step closer to M4A, as outlined in her plan.

Politico are not in the habit of throwing raw meat to Sanders supporters. They have a bias, but it’s centrist/establishment. They gain more from portraying Warren and Sanders as getting along than to accuse Warren of hypocrisy. Really, there is nothing here that is going to inflame mainstream Dems. And anything they would gain from portraying Warren as fake or defeated would be offset by the rage from those other guys. Who are in fact outraged, because they are outraged by everything so not worth worrying about.

For real, my friend sent this article earlier praising Warren and saying she hopes she gets picked. And she is a very moderate right nevertrumper who was anti-Warren (but still would have voted for her) 6 months ago.

Politico is entertainment news and neither the subject of the title nor choosing "pivot" as the verb is accidental. Online news sites don't need a ideology, they just need to make headlines that people read and share. Whether it's a Biden supporter, a Warren supporter, or a Sanders supporter, the clicks all count the same.

The title comes from a pretty default answer in a Q&A with political science students that basically no one other than Warren supporters and hardcore political science junkies would have even watched (it currently has 24 shares on Facebook), and has almost nothing to do with the article as a whole. There's nothing accidental about their title choice, and the 13 "other discussions" on this article demonstrate its effectiveness.

Nah, you’re wrong about Politico. There have been some excellent journalism coming from there, it used to be Centrist but now leans left, though not too far and more in their Opinion. They are hardly the worst out there. And every news site is now an online news site whether they have a print edition or not, which Politico does.

It was Politico’s editor who said that in their efforts to keep news unbiased they ended up biasing themselves toward the center.

"People close to Biden say that politics and governing will both be factors in his VP decision but that the media coverage overanalyzes how a pick might affect the outcome in one swing state or another, as opposed to his own priorities.

'This is a guy who has been preparing to be president nearly his entire adult life and knows the job of VP better than anyone who’s made this decision in a generation or maybe ever," said one Democrat close to the Biden team. “And if you are primarily focused on mobilizing voters in November and not about governing, then you are fundamentally misreading the audience of one that you need to convince.'"

If this is true, then Warren has an astronomically better chance of being selected for VP. In my opinion, this would mean her chances are better than Harris, since a lot of media, even this article, only refer to Harris exciting black voters (which is unfortunate considering there is a lot more she would add to the ticket than just her ethnicity/background and mobilizing voters).

I agree. Biden reportedly discussed with Warren her being his VP if he ran in 2016 but he decided not to run. It's still a wide open race, but Warren appears to be gaining steam which I am happy to see.

I'd be excited for either Warren or Harris who were my top 2 in the primary.

The sample size argument is fair enough, but it does indicate that black people aren't on the whole averse to Warren being selected. Here's another recent poll that has her polling a bit higher than Harris or Abrams with black voters, although the three candidates are more or less even in preference.

All of the results below show Warren is preferred to Harris and Abrams. They're each independent questions ("what is you opinion on Warren?" vs "choose a candidate"), so there isn't a spoiler effect caused by two high-profile black candidates being considered. People should stop assuming that black people would just automatically choose black candidates regardless of the other differences between the candidates.

I was assuming your statement related to some belief that those who support Harris would prefer Abrams and vice versa, so comparison in single-choice polls was creating a spoiler effect. These questions all allow you to compare them without the spoiler effect so you can get a true reading on the black community's preference for Warren.

If you're really truly looking for single-choice polling where she exceeds both of them, and these polls don't answer your underlying question, why?

OP statement was that Warren polled better than both COMBINED, and that's what I found hard to believe. Combined means something like 40% would prefer Warren, while the sum of the other 2 would not amount to 40%

Do you think certain progressives would hate the ACA as much if it had been Bernie’s idea?

M4A is an idea. The ACA is the path to making that idea a reality. Make it better, don’t rip it up and start over.

Her new stance on healthcare is what I wanted from the beginning. Personally, I think it’s Biden’s strongest policy position—strengthen the ACA, expand it, add a public option. Begin the slow transition to single-payer.

I watched her interview with Axelrod the other day and I immediately noticed the subtle pivot on M4A when she was asked about it.

Personally, I'm happy she's done it because I don't think M4A passing is politically possible in the immediate future and this issue was my biggest disagreement with Warren. While I'd like to see us get to M4A eventually because I think it's the best policy, I think it's a lot smarter to go for a public option first and start allowing individuals and companies to buy-in to a government plan rather than being forced to change. That gives the government the time to work out any kinks (remember the ACA marketplace launch?) and prove to people that the public option delivers great care at an affordable price.

I think it would be awesome to have Warren help design and muscle through Congress the best version of the public option we can get. One that guarantees coverage for the poor, lowers drug costs for everyone, and starts offering a real alternative to the for-profit healthcare system.

If Biden is ok with his VP being pro-M4A long term while focused on improving the ACA and passing a public option short-term, then I think this makes it more likely Warren gets the VP pick. A successful public option launch during the Biden admin makes it much easier for Warren to run again in 2024, win, and get something like M4A passed.

I genuinely believe every presidential candidate up there was pro-M4A long term. The debate was always far more about how to get there than whether it was a good idea at all. The moderates just thought trying to get there in 1 to 4 years was impossible.

Absolutely. It's the reason Pete was my #1 choice... Practicality, or pragmatism. Though I personally support it, I didn't think M4A was feasible in the general election, especially in the swing States.

Warren 'pivoting' on M4A with the transition plan may upset some on the left, but to me it just showed she was also trying to be practical about her polices and understood the political reality.

I'd be very happy with her as VP, because I think she'd really help keep Biden honest and push the party further left.

I want M4A as much as the next person but I agree that it would be an impossible task to implement it quickly and all across the country. I live in an urban area in which public education is the worst in the country, constantly underfunded and producing awful results. If that's what we should expect from public healthcare around here then it's just sad.

The truth that so many die-hard progressives refuse to admit is that this country is too polarized. No matter how much I may think that I'm right in my progressive opinions, if half the country doesn't agree and continues to elect racist presidents, then we may never see any progress at all ever.

I don't know if "polarized" is the right word on healthcare. Polls show growing majorities of people believe it's the federal government's responsibility to ensure people have healthcare. The ACA has helped steadily push those numbers up, showing that even a modest reform can change public opinion over time.

I would say that there are tens of millions of people who are terrified of losing healthcare. They've experienced losing their job and lost insurance from it. They've experienced asshole insurance companies denying claims. They or a family member has a pre-existing condition and they are barely able to afford the treatments or drugs to keep them alive.

So when people say "we're going to blow up the entire healthcare system, get rid of the coverage you have right now, but we promise the replacement will be even better!" it's totally reasonable and natural for people to be wary of that promise. This is a life and death issue, not an academic argument about tax brackets for millionaires. And that makes people naturally resistant to changes that risk them losing coverage.

This is why I think anything that forces people to move is a non-starter, no matter how good we think the end state would be. And M4A for all the good things it does forces people to change. And that's scary for a LOT of Americans.

That's why I think an opt-in public option and plans like automatically enroll all kids into Medicare but not require their parents to change are much smarter and better. We've got to not only remake the healthcare industry which is a massive share of the economy, we've got to earn the trust of 300+ million Americans that they will be better off once it's done. And we've got to prevent a massive GOP backlash where they sweep to power and immediately repeal M4A.

Incrementalism isn't a dirty word. Let's take our time and bring people along rather than forcing them to change while they are still hesitant. Let's build a durable and lasting majority support for national healthcare that will survive even a GOP POTUS and Congress - just like the ACA was popular enough to survive in the Senate because just enough GOP Senators were terrified of the public backlash from getting rid of it. And now the GOP barely talks about Repeal and Replace anymore. That's the victory we want for M4A.

I think in theory it isn't, because we're all pushing Medicare for all, rather than Medicaid. Education is mainly locally funded, similar to Medicaid, so it can be better or worse depending on where you are in the country. Medicare would exclusively be nationally funded, which means you'd get the same degree of medical insurance as a rich wall street executive. No promises that your hospital would be as good though.

this issue was my biggest disagreement with Warren. While I'd like to see us get to M4A eventually because I think it's the best policy, I think it's a lot smarter to go for a public option first and start allowing individuals and companies to buy-in to a government plan rather than being forced to change. That gives the government the time to work out any kinks (remember the ACA marketplace launch?) and prove to people that the public option delivers great care at an affordable price.

And that was a lot of her transition plan that opened her up to attacks from the left, unforunately. She wanted a public option immediately and to start working on passing M4A in Year 3. This allows for favorability to go up and for issues to be worked out.

Exactly. And that's one of the attacks that really soured me with those doing the attacks on the left. I'm so tired of the M4A purity tests. We spent 6+ months of debates and years of social media arguing.

I just want to actually focus on what can pass and how we can improve people's lives as soon as Dems regain unified control in DC.

M4A is not polarizing. An overwhelming majority of liberal voters support it and close to 50% of conservatives do as well. Commending elected officials for keeping this illusion of divisiveness alive is harmful to the goal of achieving universal healthcare, actually.

It depends on how you word it. If you explain that M4A gets rid of private insurance and forces everyone to switch over, it drops quickly in popularity. If you only describe it as a government plan to cover everyone, yes it is popular.

But polling also consistently shows that the public option is more popular than M4A. I think the factor of people being able to choose is a key cause of the difference. People don't want to be forced.

Ugh I hate hate hate the David Sirotas and Emma Vigelands of the worlds making this a thing because of the stupid headline. "The heartbreaking disintegration is complete" is what Vigeland wrote on twitter. WTF!!!!!

This is what doomed her campaign in the fall--the so-called "progressives" questioning EW's true motives and her purity on M4A and the media and the other candidates harping on Warren while letting Bernie slide.

David Sirota has always been a dishonest actor but Vigeland used to be fair. Maybe she received too much abuse from defending Warren in the past. I followed her on twitter and on literally under every tweet, even apolitical ones, people were harassing her for liking Warren (even though she endorsed Bernie). They already said that she pivoted on M4A during the primary, so how can she pivot again unless they are now willing to admit that she didn't actually pivot and that was just a lie they told to try and sink her bid.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that we are still a ways from single payer M4A. But in the face of the Republican idea of "Repeal ACA and see what happens," a pandemic killing people needlessly, and knowing where we were on the healthcare discussion even in 2014... I'll take the step forward. The primaries are the time to be idealistic, and we were. Now let's roll up our sleeves and do the work.

Exactly! The primary voters have spoken. Taking a step forward is a much needed start, and Liz being on the inside to push for more is how change is going to happen. It’s pragmatism—what can we realistically get done now—not abandoning M4A.

A degree of incrementalism is certainly necessary for the American people to attain M4A, although the goal should be to reach this point in less than a decade. I agree with Elizabeth's pragmatic approach, and just hope that we can make speedy headway. I'm in my late 20's, and if we don't make dramatic progress toward M4A soon, I am going to have to start looking into pursuing citizenship elsewhere. I am asexual, and starting a family is important to me. Without a second income or child support, I won't be able to afford to have kids in this country, unless things drastically change. I somehow have to magically save up money for family leave, pay for childcare, save for preschool tuition, add dependents onto my health insurance policy, and hoard money for all the expenses the health insurance won't cover. (And keep up with my student loans!). A lot of countries, such as Canada, make it more difficult for people to get employment-based visas after age 35, which would effectively make it impossible for me to become a citizen without a family connection. So I can't sit around and wait forever for M4A to happen - probably within the next five years if we don't have an affordable public option, I am going to have to apply for a visa elsewhere. I am terrified that if I wait too long for M4A, the door will close and I will be stuck in the US, never able to afford to become a mom.

My hope is that the public option would be affordable enough for it to galvanize the public in its favor. Unfortunately, the ACA subsidies are so low that for many middle class people it's still cheaper to go without insurance. (Because if you're paying $400 for a bare-bones insurance policy with an $8,000 deductible, you might not be able to afford actual medical expenses like an ER bill or medication. Too many of us have to choose between paying for insurance premiums and actually being able to purchase necessary medical care). The ACA requirement that people should *only* have to spend 8% of their income on insurance premiums is too much - because this doesn't take into account what people spend on co-pays, co-insurance, and uncovered medical expenses. Ideally, I'd like to see the public option be free for anyone making under ~$50 K a year (with people having the choice to opt out, if they really love their private insurance that much!).

"I think right now people want to see improvements in our health care system, and that means strengthening the Affordable Care Act," she told students at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics this week, while adding that she still wants to get to single payer eventually.

Did you not read that she said she wants single payer? But the immediate step in front of her that’s available, especially since Biden is really invested in making ACA work for his legacy (ugh) is to make Obamacare more robust to help more people.

Of course we care about M4A. What kind of question is that? Do you think Ady Barkan, longtime healthcare activist and ALS sufferer, doesn’t care about M4A because he supports Warren? Perhaps you’ve believed a lot of the disinfo out there about Warren, but don’t bring that shit in here.

She’s so committed to M4A she actually made a viable plan for how to pass it. She literally just said she’s still committed to it, even if (since she won’t be president) she can’t get it as quickly as she initially wanted.

What’s Bernie doing to get M4A passed? Fucken nothing right now. So you can take your concern trolling elsewhere!

When did she say that she's renouncing M4A? She said single payer is still her long term goal, she's listening to what the voters want and changing to match the current climate. Not telling the voters they're wrong and being stubborn.

Hah, just looked at his history. The very thing we are talking about here, Warren working on a left agenda by being pragmatic with the centrists is the thing he's DEFENDING AOC for doing in a chapo conversation.